Believe it or not, Wall Street is one industry where jobs are threatened by automation. There are two reasons for this: first, a considerable portion of investment work is surprisingly repetitive, (and thus easily automated); second, AIs and financial technology (fintech) startups are quickly becoming increasingly sophisticated, predictive programs.

Read on to learn about two areas of finance where robots are taking over—and one way that humans are pushing back.

At the very least, the responsibilities of a lower-ranking financial analyst or associate will be altered significantly. Even if they are not automated outright, it’s probably the case that analysts and associates will see their duties shift from data processing and prediction to higher-level work, such as designing financial instruments or convincing customers.

Algorithmic Trading

But analysts aren’t the only ones in the finance industry who are marked for change. Even traders, those omnipresent personalities who once dominated the floors of stock exchanges, have largely been phased out. By one count, there were over 5,500 floor traders in the NYSE in 2000; sixteen years later, there are fewer than 400.

So what caused the floor trader, the icon of the stock market, to decline so dramatically?

Even executives may soon become obsolete.

Computers, specifically algorithmic trading, which form the backbone of stock markets today. Because computers are many times faster than humans, they can easily be programmed to rapidly make a high volume of trades—so long as these trades stay within a certain set of parameters, which take into account factors like timing, price, quantity, and other mathematical models.

Yet there are problems with these new technologies as well. As Wired points out, while algorithms are an indispensable part of today’s stock markets, from assessing and trading individual stocks to executing massive trades as quickly and quietly as possible (in order to avoid outside manipulation), these technologies have sparked an arms race, as AIs face off, one side trying to protect their trades and secrets as their opponents try to crack those transactions open.

But humans are fighting back. In a rare instance of humans winning out over machines, Bloomberg reports that, when it comes to sales trading (larger blocks of stock), humans have the edge: from long experience, human sales traders can be more cost-effective, intuitive, and networked than their machine counterparts—as they can interact with other humans in ways that AIs can’t (yet) match.

But human sales traders have a specialized skillset: they deal primarily with larger clients on massive trades, where personal trust and business relationships are paramount. In that sense then, sales traders are similar to travel agents, who faced existential competition from startups like Kayak and Expedia. Like sales traders, travel agents narrowed their focus, pivoting to luxury, upmarket niches to avoid going out of business entirely.

In much the same way, Wall Street analysts and associates will have to pivot if they wish to stay in business. Given the current, cost-cutting mindsets of big business, along with the advent of increasingly capable automation, the future for the vast majority of lower- and mid-level investment professionals is bleak indeed.